The Export Administration Act (EAA) prohibits export of crypto to (dun dun dunnnn) Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. Presumably windows messenger has some kind of crypto in it so Microsoft is blocking them to somehow cover their asses legally.

Breaking their firewall is really nothing to brag about, it took me about 5 minutes to ssh into my server in the US and apt-get tinyproxy. As far as I could tell they make no effort to block proxies at all.

You are seriously wrong. I was there 6 weeks ago, and it seems that to me that the whole system is driven by butthurt and they p. much filter any site that has ever said anything mean about Iran.
From memory, blocked sites included:
michellemalkin.com - because she says mean things about Iran
apnews.myway.com - because the AP wire service is part of a counterrevolutionary monarchist conspiracy
openvpn.org - because VPN is for terrorists

Our President at the time, Jimmy Carter, was also a micro-manager and a former nuclear engineer:

U.S. Navy reactor operators, the sort who served under Jimmy Carter in the 1950s,

Is not and never was a nuclear engineer, much less did he command a nuclear sub. He served as an enlisted man on several diesel-electric subs and started, but did not complete, a Naval class in nuclear engineering. He resigned from the Navy (as a lieutenant) before any nuclear subs were commissioned.

Do you know how cows digest grass? Cows (and virtually all other mammals) lack a critical enzyme to break down the main nutrient in grass, cellulose. They get around this by hosting trillions of bacteria in their guts which are able to produce cellulase. The bacteria gorge on the cellulose the cow brings into its stomach(s), and convert it to glucose and energy for their own use. The cow then betrays them moving them to a later portion of their digestive tract where these bacteria are killed and broken down to nourish the cow.

Bacteria react to injury, they remember the past, and they even predict the future. If you buy into the theory that causing pain is immoral then every cow is a walking Auschwitz. (not even to mention the problem of brushing teeth)

By the way, there is no philosophical reason why "it feels pain" is a better standard for deciding whether injuring something is cruel than any other arbitrary standard, see Hume